Wed­dings in Pak­istan

SYED MOHAMMA SAAD Mar­riage in Pak­istan has be­come an event for the cra­zi­est dis­plays of spend­ing money on in­cred­i­bly lav­ish barat, val­i­mas, mehndi, gifts and dowry, ap­par­ently. It is both fas­ci­nat­ing and alarm­ing that all classes of so­ci­ety are re­spon­si­ble for this mad­ness.

Our priv­i­leged class uses the shadi event to show how rich they are. The mid­dle class is, as usual, torn of think­ing which class-they-fall-in, try their best to spend as much as they can and make ev­ery­one be­lieve that they can ac­tu­ally af­ford ev­ery­thing and any­thing - with the debts of course. The poor class takes out the money from their ba­sic needs, health and ed­u­ca­tion to cover up the cost of mar­riage. It is not hard to find cases in Pak­istan where a poor fam­ily saved money for years for their daugh­ter’s mar­riage, even when that money could have been used for se­cur­ing the fu­ture of their chil­dren by send­ing them to schools and col­leges.

It is the re­spon­si­bil­ity of gov­ern­ment to en­cour­age peo­ple to adopt a re­al­is­tic ap­proach to­wards th­ese func­tions; aus­ter­ity laws must be en­acted and en­forced to curb the ex­trav­a­gant ex­or­bi­tant spend­ing on wed­dings. —Karachi